Today we go down one of my favorite rabbit holes — the Grand Tartaria conspiracy. And look, before we get into it: bucket of salt, okay? A big one. But this one is special, because unlike a lot of conspiracy theories, it actually has some genuinely weird historical facts woven into it that are worth knowing about regardless of where you land on the theory itself.
What We Cover:
We start where any good mystery should start — underground. Beneath modern Seattle there’s a complete city: storefronts, sidewalks, doorways, windows. All intact. All one story below the street. It’s a tourist attraction. And Seattle isn’t the only one.
From there we get into the meat of it:
The Maps — The world’s first modern atlas, published in 1570, labels a massive stretch of Central Asia and Siberia as Tartaria Magna. Gerard Mercator’s maps show it. The Blaeu Atlas shows it. By 1747, a French cartographer is subdividing it — Chinese Tartary, Independent Tartary, Muscovite Tartary — with internal borders and distinct regions. These aren’t fringe documents. They’re in real libraries. You can go look at them. And then, sometime between the 1830s and 1880s, Tartaria just vanishes from the maps entirely.
The Mud Flood — Believers say a cataclysmic event buried entire levels of cities across the Northern Hemisphere in mud and sediment sometime in the early-to-mid 1800s. Old photographs from the era show buildings with dirt banked high against their walls and windows sitting below grade. Chicago hydraulically raised its entire downtown several feet in the 1850s and 60s. Seattle raised its streets a full story after the Great Fire of 1889. The official explanations exist — but believers ask why so many cities needed dramatic alterations within the same general window of time.
The Orphan Trains — Between 1854 and 1929, somewhere between 200,000 and 300,000 children were transported by train from New York City to rural families across the Midwest and West. Documented history. The stated reason was urban poverty relief. But Grand Tartarians ask: where did that many orphans actually come from? And why do so many show up in the record with no documentation, no family names, no traceable origins?
The Architecture Problem — In 1893, Chicago hosted the World’s Columbian Exposition — the White City. Over 200 monumental neoclassical buildings constructed in roughly two years, including what was at the time the largest building in the world by floor space. Then demolished after six months of use. Believers say you don’t build that with a frontier labor force in two years. And they point to grand courthouses and civic buildings in smaller Western cities — St. Louis, Buffalo, Cincinnati — and ask the same question: who was the client?
Anatoly Fomenko — A real Russian mathematician and credentialed academic who conducted a statistical analysis of historical texts and concluded that large portions of medieval history were either invented or duplicated by later scholars. Mainstream historians reject his work. He’s still not a crank in an RV.
The Why — An emerging Anglo-European power structure — Freemasons, early banking dynasties, the winners of the nascent industrial economy — who needed to erase Tartaria to establish legitimacy. The Romanovs get pulled in as a puppet regime. So does the Smithsonian, which has its own reputation for buying up anomalous evidence and making it disappear.
Then I give you my honest take — Grand Tartaria is probably one of the easiest conspiracy theories to debunk with a light push. But it leads you to genuinely interesting places, and it’s one of the most fun rabbit holes you can go down.
Writing Updates:
Good news on The Heart of the Wasteland, the final book of the Seven Signs series. The second draft is coming together better than expected. Two more plot lines finished this week, and the toughest rewrites are behind us. Word count is back up to 292,000 words after some cutting and adding, and it’s looking like we’ll land right back around 300,000 before it’s done.
This book has had a strange journey — written halfway, lost, then restarted from around 60,000–80,000 words in. Some of those plot lines frayed toward the middle as a result, and the last couple of weeks have been a lot of book surgery. But D’Jenn’s plot line in particular has come out somewhere I’m really happy with.
Target release is still end of March. Second draft should be wrapped next week, then it goes to the editor.
The Bleeding Edge — the monthly works-in-progress release — is dropping next week instead of this week, so it can include the second draft of The Heart of the Wasteland. This one will be available for purchase at around three bucks, so you don’t need to be a patron to grab it. You’ll get Through Burning Skies, The Heart of the Wasteland, Wyrm Rider, and the first parts of several other projects in progress.
After The Seven Signs wraps, the next 90 days are about Dragon Riders of Zerath. That’s the plan and we’re sticking to it.
Free books: — I’m still doing Bookfunnel free book promotions. These are great for finding new indie authors and new series to read. All you need to do is trade your email for a free fantasy or sci-fi book, straight to your inbox. All fantasy and sci-fi; no romantasy titles.
You can also head over to dwhawkins.com/promos and check out all the promos I’m currently running.
Next week: possibly ancient energy and the Tesla connection. Stay tuned.